Grupos Beta and the Wall

Day 3, Grupos Beta and the Wall

TRIP TO THE BORDER

BorderLinks Delegation

Participants:  Steve Goering, Susan Ortman Goering, John Schneider, Anne-Marie Patrie

March 13, 2013

By: Susan

Grupos Beta.

Just before returning to the US, we spent an hour or so at Grupos Beta.  Employees, supported by the Mexican government, go into the desert on the Mexican side and offer food, water and medical aid to migrants and recent deportees.  They also offer the same to recent deportees.  Beta also allows other organizations such as Kino Border Initiative (see yesterday’s blog) and No More Deaths to come to Beta’s location and offer services.  We saw them handing out compasses and offering safe phone calls home.  Migrants are vulnerable, taken advantage of easily.  One common scam is to offer to let a migrant call family somewhere, either in the US or back home.  Then, when the migrant hands the phone back, the phone’s owner accesses the number just called and makes another phone call to the family to extort money from them.  So, being able to make a safe call to let family know about location and status is extremely helpful to a migrant.

The courtyard was full of migrants.  Many of those present had tried to cross and had been deported.  Some were hoping to make their first attempt soon.  Most were young.  Most were extremely unprepared for the journey ahead.

We divided into small groups with several of us, an interpreter from our group, and a migrant.  Our small group of 3 talked to a young man, I’ll call Juan.   Amazingly, I had seen Juan the day before when we met with West from Kino.  We waited in the van for West to arrive, within sight of the border crossing where most of the big trucks cross with produce and other goods for the US.   Juan had come walking down the hill from the border crossing; I picked him out as a migrant.  He was wearing a backpack and had a bundle wrapped in a black garbage bag.  He waited around the corner and then came into Kino to eat.

Juan was 17, from southern Mexico.  He had ridden the trains north, a dangerous undertaking in itself as people fall off the trains and are injured or killed.  Sometimes they are beaten and robbed.  Juan talked about how cold it was at night, how the cold went right through his jacket and sweatshirt and shirt.  His plan was to go over the fence with a friend and cross at night.  While the fence looks formidable to me, apparently, scaling the fence is not uncommon.  He had a friend in Tucson.  He showed us the phone number on a scrap of paper in his pocket.  He hoped to get a job in a nursery or working on a farm.  He asked how long it took to get to Tucson.  We said an hour by car, but several days walking.  His face fell, but he was still determined.  He had no guide through the desert, no money, no food or water.  “Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow night,” he said.

Steve’s group talked with a 19 year old I’ll call Jaime.   He was from Vera Cruz and had gotten enough money from his father to ride busses north.  He had grown up with his 6 siblings on a very small, very poor farm. One brother was already in the US; Jaime hoped to find him; he thought he was in New York.  Jaime had an elementary education; his first language was a dialect, but he had learned some Spanish in school.  He had paid someone to guide him through the desert.  Beyond that, his money was gone.  He was leaving, “perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow night.”

This was one of the hardest visits for me.  They were so young, so unprepared.  I remember crying and wondering what I should pray for related to Juan.  It seemed that his chances of making it were zero.  I wondered if I should pray that he would be picked up and brought back so he would not die in the desert. I prayed for safety and wisdom.  I think about him often and wonder where he is.  Did he make it?  Did he get picked up?  Did he die?  I think about his mother and how painful it would be to have your children leaving one by one knowing you might never hear from them again, knowing they might be tortured, raped, beat up, taken advantage of, knowing they might die.   There are so many Juans, so many Jaimes, so many grieving mothers.  I grieve. 

Most evenings Joan, the leader of the group from St. Cloud, led our day end reflection time.  She asked where we had seen Christ that day.  Our answers varied.  We saw Christ many places, in many people.  On this day of our delegation, I saw Christ in each of these migrants:  poor, young, vulnerable, but also courageous and hopeful.    I find myself praying for them often.  I pray for us, that we might not forget them, but rather will work for change.  Christ will be in the change.

 The Wall.

We crossed the border after sitting in a long line of cars waiting to cross.  Our leader from Hepac had been driving, but he got out and walked across while Austin, our leader from BorderLinks drove the van.  The groups have learned that having a Hispanic person in the vehicle makes it much more likely that the car will be pulled over into “secondary” for a more thorough search.  Sure enough, the officer looked very briefly at our passports and waved us through. 

The wall where we crossed was metal and about 20 feet high.  One can look through the metal slats, but not talk to someone on the other side, or hand something through the slats.  Parts of the wall are wire, chain link or concrete.  The building costs are huge;  a  portion of the fence in California cost over $4 million dollars a mile to build.   Significant stretches of the almost 2000 mile long border sport a virtual wall consisting of lights, electronic sensors and cameras, also hugely expensive.  The cost to maintain the wall, both real and virtual, and the environmental cost complete the picture.  The effectiveness of the wall, in terms of actually keeping people, drugs, money, etc., from crossing to the other side is, according to some, minimal. 

We spent some time at the wall before returning to Tucson.   We drove up a hill where we could see how it stretched to the east and the west as far as the eye could see.    We could see border patrol cars all around us watching, watching.  Our leader from Hepac, stayed in the van; if the border patrol saw his brown face, they might well have come to check us out more thoroughly.  We spent some time there, praying, imagining how we conceived of such a monstrosity.  I was amazed at our fear of those who are different, our need to keep people out, our belief that we can keep people from seeking a better life for themselves or their children. 

West’s (from Kino, day 2) words came back to me.  The most stated, unwavering Biblical injunction is to care for the stranger and the widow, provide hospitality for the alien.  Instead of looking for real solutions to the immigration questions, we have put our time and money into a wall.  Instead of caring for and helping those who have less than we have, we have built a wall.  How God must grieve our selfishness.